Posted
by
Soulskillon Tuesday August 27, 2013 @10:05PM
from the build-your-apps-against-the-code-you-imagine-we'll-ship dept.

CWmike writes "Windows app developers are taking Microsoft to task for the company's decision to withhold Windows 8.1 until mid-October. Traditionally, Microsoft offers an RTM to developers several weeks before the code reaches the general public. On Tuesday, however, Microsoft confirmed that although Windows 8.1 has reached RTM, subscribers to MSDN will not get the final code until the public does on Oct. 17, saying it was not finished. Antoine Leblond, a Microsoft spokesman, said in a blog post, 'In the past, the release to manufacturing milestone traditionally meant that the software was ready for broader customer use. However, it's clear that times have changed.' Developers raged against the decision in comments on another Microsoft blog post, one that told programmers to write and test their apps against Windows 8.1 Preview, the public sneak peak that debuted two months ago. One commenter, 'brianjsw,' said, 'In the real world, developers must have access to the RTM bits before [general availability]. The fact that Microsoft no longer seems to understand this truly frightens me.'"

so Microsoft wants only the agile and extreme to survive, while the slackers get left behind. makes sense to me.

Sounds more to me like Microsoft is making consumers be beta testers for all of the 3rd party software out there, and putting a much higher support burden on the independent software developers since they can't test their software on the released OS until the public does.

that's fine too, they'll keep buying Microsoft since that's what's pre-loaded on almost everything sold. suckers. Remember Ballmer and MS only "in trouble" because their ever growing profits and income are growing quite as fast as they'd like. they aren't hurting at all

Remember Ballmer and MS only "in trouble" because their ever growing profits and income are growing quite as fast as they'd like. they aren't hurting at all

Nobody is suggesting that M$ is in any financial Difficulty. The "in trouble" is 5 quarters of PC sales down. The "in trouble" is missing the boat on massive computing shifts like mobile and cloud. The "in trouble" is its partners are walking away form Windows and announcing greater Android and Chrome products. The "in trouble" is its trying to be a services and devices company...and failing at both. The "in trouble" is those competitors it could crush with spare change or be having or being a monopoly, now have Billions of their own they are struggling to spend. The "in trouble" is suddenly both its cash cows of Windows and OS have competitive replacements at little or no cost.. The "in trouble" is its brand smells of failure. The "in trouble" is everything it had depends on its "windows" monopoly, and suddenly that is looking to be a legacy windows monopoly/Microsoft Office Insurance monopoly, and suddenly those are not not as relevant, and becoming less relevant.

Ballmer is not "in trouble" he is out the door, stabbed in the front by Bill no less, and its not because Microsoft is "in trouble" financially its just all that future computing cash looks to be flowing to other companies who aren't "in trouble"

Nobody is suggesting that M$ is in any financial Difficulty. The "in trouble" is 5 quarters of PC sales down.

Well, look at the state of the industry? If you game on a PC, do you need to upgrade it? Most of the time people are going 2-3 years now. That heavily attributed to consoles stagnating the market. If you do basic things on it, like email and word processing, do you really need more than a dual core for that? There isn't any drive in the market, in turn it's hit it's peak.

In the past, a PC gamer would replace their main rig every year to 18 months, and this would drive quite a bit of sales. In fact, ordinary PC users would change their computer every 2 to 3 years because the new ones were much better, and new software was more capable (and a lot more bloated) and wouldn't run well on a 2 year old machine. This started changing in the early 2000s for non-gaming PCs (my non-gaming development box I built in 2002 lasted 7 years - basically until components started to fail). For gamers this started changing towards 2010 - now there's little advantage in changing your gaming rig more than once every 3 or 4 years.

The result - while PC usage is probably still growing a little, PC *buying* is declining rapidly because a machine from 2010 is still good enough even for gamers, and a machine from 2005 is good enough for typical email/browse the web stuff. My main gaming rig now is a decent spec *laptop* with nvidia graphics and an i7, and not a hideously overweight one either like gaming laptops of 5 or 6 years ago. Since hardly anyone buys Windows retail, falling PC sales means falling Windows sales. A Windows license for a normal PC is lasting 6 years or more now as people only replace when components actually fail beyond economic repair, and most every day users are no more likely to buy a Windows upgrade any more than they will switch to Linux. A Windows license on a gaming PC is lasting at least 3 years now, possibly more - when in the past, Microsoft could rely on gamers buying a new Windows license every year to 18 months and non-gamers every 2 to 3 years.

Insightful, really mods? Got news for ya pal and its that NOBODY IS BUYING WIN 8! In fact I can get a refurb Win 7 machine sold in a few hours, i had a Win 8 machine sit SEVEN MONTHS before it sold, how did I sell it? Put Win 7 on it!

MSFT is screwed on two fronts, 1.- After the MHz Wars switched to the Core War PCs quickly became waaaaaay overpowered compared to the jobs that folks had to do, so that 5 year old C2D laptop, or Phenom I X3 desktop? it has more cycles to spare than Joe Average knows what to do with. 2.- When it does come time to get something new a lot of people are either having the machine they have fixed or are buying a Win 7 system because Win 8 is a DO NOT WANT, its Vista all over again with people using downgrade rights (I've had to deal with downgrades so often that I now charge extra if I have to call for a key) or buying OEM or getting a refurb unit, whatever it takes the vast majority will do because they hate Windows 8!

Dude its not even just the little guys like me, its gotten so bad for the OEMs that Lenovo and Acer are selling their PCs "pre hacked" [computerworld.com] with a third party shell already bolted on so the machine looks and acts like....Windows 7! That is fricking bad when the #1 OEM on the planet has to hack the shell just to get anybody to buy a PC with Windows 8 on it, I mean how piss poor do you have to be for sales to have the OEMs go out and buy a third party shell and bolt that shit on there just to move some units?

So try looking at those figures again before you say MSFT has the customers locked in, because between Android, ChromeOS, OSX, iOS, and Win 7 frankly there is a lot of choices for those that think Win 8 is a turd and judging by the adoption rates a hell of a lot more are ignoring or actively avoiding Win 8 than are buying.

It was miles better than Program Manager and File Manager. The start menu and the rest of the Windows 95 interface was the last time Microsoft spent big bucks doing user interface and human-computer interaction studies and research. The Chicago/Win95 betas were by far the most interesting to look at since major changes to the UI would occur each release as MS would try out new things... and remove stuff that didn't work out so well.

OEM's have always been installing third party software in an attempt to improve upon Windows and differentiate themselves from each other.

I'm more of the opinion they do it to get paid some distribution money from the third party crap. Much like I don't think Oracle is trying to improve Java or Windows when they try to install that Ask.com shit toolbar.

Nobody is doing it to improve anything but their bottom line, and they're willing to install shitware to do it.

I won't even buy an OEM install because it's got so much crap on it -- my mother in law and my wife's laptops took so much time to disable all of the shit it wasn't funny. What should be on paper a decent machine with nice specs is full of shit that slows it down and makes it unusable, because there's no memory left.

More on topic, if Microsoft isn't going to get this to developers before they get it to the public, they're going to have the same problem they've been having... in addition to nobody actually wanting Windows 8, there won't be any apps for it.

What it means is that the developers should calm down because MS didn't actually make any significant changes. They're just dropping in a new default wallpaper and turning off a few features everyone hates to make it more 'user friendly'.

Until you mentioned it I hadn't even considered the possibility that by putting the "start button" back in MS might be completely breaking code 3rd parties are using for their implementations of alternative menus. It'll be interesting to see if that's what happens. If they do break 3rd party menus there's going to be a hell of a lot of screaming on the interwebs from people who were only able to use Win8 because of the third party menus.

Sounds more to me like Microsoft is making consumers be beta testers for all of the 3rd party software out there, and putting a much higher support burden on the independent software developers since they can't test their software on the released OS until the public does.

You're exaggerating the burden. What are the odds that any single independent developer has managed to sell their app to all three people who own Windows 8?

Shouldn't have posted that. Better to let them wallow in their own ignorance rather than correct them with information which is very, very easy to find on the net. They've already made up their mind because if they really wanted to know the truth, they would have found out by now.

Back in the XP days, if I mentioned Linux, peolpe looked at me like a deer in the headlights.Back in the VISTA days, a few people asked me what I heard about VISTA.Back in the 7 days, the most said was to me was "It's not XP, but I like it"Now with 8, people activley come up to me and tell me how much is sucks.

It appears that XP was the pinacle of Microsoft Computing. Sure 7 was better, but not

I fucking HATE this argument that if something like Linux is not working out for me, I have no reason to criticize because it's free. That's great, so I'll just use Windows then because it gives me less pain, now what? People will spend money if it saves them some pain.

Being free is NOT a reason to abstain being critical of its quality. Nothing gets better if they keep their standards low. I'm not saying Windows 8 is amazing or anything - I do think it was something of a misstep for Microsoft. But after yea

I completely agree with you here. I have dared to criticise the Linux desktop here in the past and have been met with loads of abuse. I started using Linux in 1998 and around that time it looked like it might bury the joke that was Windows 9x/NT but instead of rallying round a set of common standards and working to ensure Windows users could transition painlessly to Linux all there was was pointless bickering that people called "competition" which would "lead to higher standards". Well 15 years later it

Or maybe, just maybe, the dirty little secret MSFT doesn't want you to know is really the fact that Windows 8.1 is just Windows 8 with a switch flipped that will let you go to the desktop and some more "apps apps apps, have we mentioned we have an appstore with apps?" in your face metro bullshit. Like making a "Start Goatse" as I call it where you click the start button trying to escape and it hauls your ass right back to metro...have they mentioned they have touch and apps?

Or maybe the engineers at MSFT are doing this on purpose, its been widely known that ballmer is fricking HATED by many at the company and doing what they can to make sure "Ballmer's Folly" flops as bad as Win 8? Really wouldn't be out of the question. At the end it won't matter though as i can tell you little shops like mine have stopped carrying Win 8x anything as I have watched people gladly pay for a more expensive refurb with Win 7 than be forced to take Windows 8, its a giant DO NOT WANT as far as consumers are concerned and after I was stuck fixing that mess a few times i can say honestly? Don't blame 'em.

It takes a HELL of a lot more than simply slapping Start8 to kill the abomination that is "Oh hai I'm a cellphone LULZ" Metro, specifically it took a half a dozen deep level registry hacks AND hunting down a generic synaptics touchpad driver to kill those $%#^%# swipe gestures bullshit, and even then it looks like a poor man's Win 7 copy. I'm predicting it'll bomb and suck and be the punchline of jokes, just like Win 8. They can polish their asses off but all they are gonna have is a shiny turd NOT a diamond!

Sounds more to me like Microsoft is making consumers be beta testers for all of the 3rd party software out there, and putting a much higher support burden on the independent software developers since they can't test their software on the released OS until the public does.

Which is pretty much how it's done with Android and that seems to work well enough. On the other hand their old strategy was to do it more similar to iOS and OSX which seem to throw out a new beta every 2 weeks, which works well for them too.

It sounds like Microsoft wants a three to six month jump on their competition for Windows 8.1 "Modern UI" apps.

Seems stupid to me, considering that most users aren't really buying into "Modern UI" anyway. I would want people filling their app store with as many launch day titles as possible to build legitimacy to the platform.

I think the point of the article is that developers feel likely to end up burned by any substantial differences between Windows 8.1 preview and Windows 8.1 RTM. When a difference between preview and RTM causes an application not to work, it may end up with unjustified 1-star ratings (or whatever the equivalent on Windows Store is).

RTM means release to manufacturing, i.e to the OEMs to test on beta hardware and with beta drivers.

Take Google, which just drops the new version of the Android SDK over the wall along with the hardware running the new version of the Android OS. I didn't notice any outrage there, perhaps because they don't allow comments on their blog posts(or they don't have blog posts). Or perhaps because if Google does it, it's okay.

This is just a low-effort manufactured story quoting blog comments, by the cookie cutter Computerworld "journalists" who can't even spell "sneak peak[sic]" and submitted by them to Slashdot to troll for pageviews. Another Slashdot low.

The author of this "article"? A certain Gregg Keizer, who is most well known for inteviewing a fake CEO(who was actually a computerworld writer himself) who faked Windows 7 benchmarks to spread FUD against Windows 7, which Slashdot predictably lapped up at the time. (now, Windows 7 is the best OS ever according to Slashdot though)

ComputerWorld reporter Gregg Keizer last week quoted a company source as boasting, “Outside of Microsoft, I don't think anyone knows more about Windows performance than us.”...
ComputerWorld reporter Gregg Keizer has frequently been first on the scene with details when DMS has released a new study. We found at least a dozen stories under his by-line at ComputerWorld based on reports from XPNet, many including quotes from DMS Chief Technology Officer Barth. As we note later in this report, our reporting strongly suggests that “Craig Barth” does not exist and is in fact a pseudonym for InfoWorld contributing editor Kennedy since the late 1990s

Yet Slashdot continues to fall victim to this junk on multiple stories every week, the jokes on us. However, it's apparent that readership is dropping, as people with half a brain continue to quit, the moderation becomes even more brutal towards any comment that is not hating on Microsoft(see GP comment modded down, perhaps by Computerworld sockpuppets for calling out CWMike), and people lose interest in submitted stories to a dead place, resulting in Computerworld and HotHardware's MojoKid blogspam taking over the front page as they have a vested interest to submit stories and write flamebait headlines and summaries as they know Slashdot laps it up, and this causes more people to leave.. The problem seems to be taking care of itself.

Take Google, which just drops the new version of the Android SDK over the wall along with the hardware running the new version of the Android OS. I didn't notice any outrage there, perhaps because they don't allow comments on their blog posts(or they don't have blog posts). Or perhaps because if Google does it, it's okay.

The funny thing is that Google doesn't even release a beta or RC version for Android like MS did with the 8.1 preview. Where's the Slashdot story and outrage?

The Slashdot story "Linux Vendors Push For Open-Source In Hybrid Datacenter Clouds" has just 19 comments after 4 hours. Now most of Slashdot comments consist of lame karmawhores like tuppe666, tepples, MightyMartian and bmo competing with each other to post the most puerile anti-MS drivel and modding each other up in the echochamber and shouting down anyone who points out their over the top hate and idiocy. Sad, really, atleast earlier insightful comments used to get modded up, now they have no chance.

Take Google, which just drops the new version of the Android SDK over the wall along with the hardware running the new version of the Android OS. I didn't notice any outrage there

Google can do this because on release a very small number of normal users, plus some contingent of the most technically hard core are the only ones who are going to be running that version of the OS for a while.

The day 8.1 goes out many millions of fairly non-technical people will be running it. If your software is glitchy at that

MS knows EXACTLY how to treat its 3rd party developers. Like shit and the 3rd party developers will lap it up hoping that one day they will be bought out. Or *shiver* partnered. Which is code for getting it so hard up the ass your tonsils hurt.

I call BS. In some pink fluffy world where unicorns do prance, doth Microsoft hold steady between preview release and RTM. Preview is just that, a preview of some ideas that they may or may not keep come RTM. So developing on preview is always a gamble because the technology that was there but not mature in preview, may have just been pulled in order to make RTM timeframe.

Microsoft holding the golden bits back is just another peg in their hostilities towards developers and pretty much renders a good bit of MSDN memberships useless, not all grant you, but I know a lot of people who hold MSDN membership just so they can be ahead of the curve. Holding back is just plain silly but strangely makes sense for some company that continues to gear away from the old "Desktop Think".

I'm not judging you, it's a common thing to think preview = RTM, but historically that's just not been the case. Microsoft is prone to fiddle between the two time slots, and your program is hosed if it tickles the fancy for someone, to add some extra BOOL parameter to a method to make it work for some vendor in testing.

Preview is not equal to RTM and trying to develop software you intend to sell to someone(s) for large sums based on preview, is just begging for support tickets to flow in like the breaking of the Teton Dam. When you hear a bunch of MCSDs gather round talking about that guy, that's the guy their talking about. Don't be that guy.

On Tuesday, however, Microsoft confirmed that although Windows 8.1 has reached RTM, subscribers to MSDN will not get the final code until the public does on Oct. 17, saying it was not finished.

What the fuck. No. Words mean things, and "release to manufacturing" means that the software is ready for Releasing To Manufacturing. It doesn't mean "beta 15", or "we think this might be ready", or "release candidate". It means that it's ready to ship and that this is what will be going out the door on launch day.

Google's infinite betas are a bit of mild industry humor, but "beta" doesn't have an inherent definition. You can stretch it to justify almost anything. But "RTM", "release candidate", and others have very specific, unambiguous meanings. If it's not finished, it's not RTM no matter who the hell says it is.

On Tuesday, however, Microsoft confirmed that although Windows 8.1 has reached RTM, subscribers to MSDN will not get the final code until the public does on Oct. 17, saying it was not finished.

What the fuck. No. Words mean things, and "release to manufacturing" means that the software is ready for Releasing To Manufacturing. It doesn't mean "beta 15", or "we think this might be ready", or "release candidate". It means that it's ready to ship and that this is what will be going out the door on launch day.

Google's infinite betas are a bit of mild industry humor, but "beta" doesn't have an inherent definition. You can stretch it to justify almost anything. But "RTM", "release candidate", and others have very specific, unambiguous meanings. If it's not finished, it's not RTM no matter who the hell says it is.

... and yet, at the same time, if you pick up a brand new PS3 or XBox game on the release date and shove it in your console, the first thing it does is download an update. People have come to not only understand day-1 patches, but almost expect them. And yes, that sucks for developers, because while you and your customers may be fine with a day-1 patch of your software as the price of install, you still need to write that patch on a stable code base.

and microsoft, what the fuck are you doing? wrap 8.1 up as a windows update or call it sp1.. sure it's "free" for win8 users, but they have to "buy" it for zero retail cost from your online store.. which means, you get to know all the little deets of every one of the upgraders.. a totally unnecessary data grab and invasion of user's privacy.... shame shame shame on you... i cant wait for the media shitstorm on release day once that lil 'catch' is "discovered" by reporters.

This is what I have been saying. While you can use Windows 8 with a local account, more and more stuff is tied to your Microsoft Account, such as accessing the Windows Store to get the 8.1 update. They know when I log on to my computer, they know when I install a certain app from the Store, and they can datamine various things here and there when I am just normally using my PC.

Rarely are APIs stable between preview and RTM. Unless Microsoft has also done a 180 turn for stablilty between the two points, which from the article doesn't sound like the case, I wouldn't bet on APIs being stable between the two.

Keep in mind that Windows "8.1" is really just a service pack for Windows 8. Only the marketing department ran amok and decided to bump the version number to make it look like this "rapid release" shit.

It is hilarious watching all the betaz folks getting all crazy excited over a damn service pack.

It doesn't matter how it's named. Some devs that are complaining are not "betaz folks" as you dismiss them. Some of them merely want to make sure that RTM doesn't break anything. You know why? Because they are they ones who have to deal with it. Maybe RTM doesn't really change much. However, all they have is MS saying so. Anyone who's installed a Service Pack from any vendor should know better than take their word. Given how normal MS service packs break things, it's being prudent. But to me what M

Microsoft got burned by all those developers bad mouthing Win8 for months before it came out, which killed sales, and they won't let that happen again. It's a Google conspiracy, you see. Because Win8 is actually a great OS. Who doesn't want to sit in the office all day swiping tiles until their arm breaks off? It's good for your triceps.

Exactly, Windows 8 starts up fast on a SSD, the productivity and games run well with new the fast new gpu and cpus, the computer shuts down fast too.
8.1 will bring back the look and feel older people where missing and everybody will be happy.

How so? I've read that 8.1 just brings back a visible button in the lower left to open the Start screen. It still has the same problem that the Start screen entirely covers up the applications you were using on the desktop, breaking subconscious continuity, unlike the Windows 7 Start menu or the Classic Shell Start menu that sits in the lower-left corner and leaves what you were working on visible.

This post is a public plea for someone within Microsoft to come forward with documentation on the rationale behind the recent apparent loss of all reason and common sense by the company.

Please, please come forward now!

The actions of this company make no sense to us. We are bewildered by the illogically behavior of Microsoft's direction.

Everyone knows that to ruin the useability of Windows by the utter donkey skit that is the Metro Interface makes no sense. There must be some greater reason behind these mysterious decisions that Microsoft has recently under taken.

So give us an internal memo or two! There must have been voices of intelligence within Microsoft who argued against the self-destructive path that it has recently undertaken.

So when it gets released and pushed out over Windows Update, the average user's install won't break because some little driver has an issue with how Windows 8.1 does things. Having the RTM out early also allows OEMs to make sure they are picking hardware that will work best with Windows 8.1 and have 8.1 machines ready for to be sold when 8.1 drops. By not having an RTM, Microsoft is telling everyone to go screw themselves and that they'll have to figure out if stuff works on Release Day.

So when it gets released and pushed out over Windows Update, the average user's install won't break because some little driver has an issue with how Windows 8.1 does things. Having the RTM out early also allows OEMs to make sure they are picking hardware that will work best with Windows 8.1 and have 8.1 machines ready for to be sold when 8.1 drops.

Which is why they have an RTM which has been...Released To Manufacturers.

By not having an RTM, Microsoft is telling everyone to go screw themselves and that they'll have to figure out if stuff works on Release Day.

Well yeah that might be correct, but they do have an RTM so what you're saying isn't particularly relevant.

Can you please explain why developers need the early access? Is Windows 8.1 not backwards compatible? If it's not available to devs prior to GA will the users end up spending several months being able to do nothing but play solitaire? What is the significance of a third-party piece of software being GA on the exact day as the OS it targets?

Backwards compatible is not always backwards compatible, I haven't written MS software in ages but plenty of things behave differently with new releases and SP's - sometimes bugs that your software has been written to work around have been "fixed", which then makes your workaround fail... Maybe your software doesn't use any of those bits, or maybe it makes your software crash upon startup. The only way to know is to run it against the same release that consumers are getting.

As someone who has written and maintained complex commercial Windows software recently I can say that since Windows Vista the backwards compatibility story with Windows is not nearly as good as it used to be. Pretty much every new version of Windows since then has brought some serious changes in behavior.

Windows 7 on the surface did not introduce a large amount of breaking changes when compared to Windows Vista. Probably the biggest breaking change was the need to use a new GUID [microsoft.com] in your application manifest if you didn't want your customers to be annoyed by the "Program Compatibility Assistant."

However, Win7 was the first version where 64 bit OS installations really took off. Depending on the application, making an existing 32 bit Windows application work on a 64 bit OS can be a lot of work. I'm not talking about recompiling to 64 bit here either. There are a fair number of breaking changes with regard to COM objects, esp. if you are mixing.NET and native code anywhere.

Win8 brings us Metro/Modern apps which most Windows developers have been ignoring because of lack of backwards compatibility with Win7 and a strict sandbox that makes it almost impossible to write anything other than silly casual games (Cut the Rope/Angry Birds) or an "app" that does nothing more than access a website which you could access with your web browser anyway ("Facebook app"/"Netflix app".)

For the people who write applications (not "apps") Windows 8 has a couple things that make life difficult as well. One of the big ones is how difficult it is to perform an automated installation of.NET 3.5 [microsoft.com]. For those doing driver development, the addition of connected standby to Win8 has really complicated life as well.

All this adds up ever since Vista we have always had to make changes to our software to support a new OS release, wierdly enough binary compatibility between OS releases on Windows is actually becoming comparable to a typical Linux distribution. With the release cadence of Windows becoming quicker ongoing support and maintenance for commercial Windows software is quickly becoming as expensive as commercial Linux software support.

However, Win7 was the first version where 64 bit OS installations really took off.

It's also when we found out how much legacy 16 bit shit was a point of failure in expensive applications and wouldn't run on 64 bit Win7 - I'm looking at you AutoDesk, Halliburton, and just about every "security" copy protection dongle supplier on the planet. It's no use if your expensive per seat application won't run because some IDIOT has coded something as recent as a usb driver for a evil dongle thing in 16 bit.

If I'm a Dev, I would be trying to use the FIXED features as much as possible, especially for desktops. So if I was working on a win 8.1 app, I just got nicked at the last minute. So when my customer upgrades at 12:01am I got no chance to get a patch in place. Behavior like that is Microsoft throwing their devs under the bus (of pissed off customers) for no good reason at all.

I think Apple still gives Devs a few days between releasing "Gold" to them and the package for general release. That way they have lead time to load up the App Store for release day.

Those features I mentioned will affect existing apps, not just apps to be newly released. Developers would like to test to make sure the new features don't interact poorly with existing apps.

It doesn't really matter how it's done in the Android world, the point is that developers currently pay for MSDN subscriptions precisely to get access to Microsoft software for development purposes and now those perks are largely useless. It's a regression on a paid subscription, we have every right to be unhappy abo

Those features I mentioned will affect existing apps, not just apps to be newly released. Developers would like to test to make sure the new features don't interact poorly with existing apps.

Are the existing apps using the new APIs? Do they operate poorly in the Preview?

I don't think the apps call any APIs to trigger the new functionality, I believe the OS just does its thing assuming the apps will behave correctly. Considering part of the reason the original Metro split screen stuff was so limited was because Microsoft "guaranteed" that apps will only run 1/3, 2/3 or 3/3 of the screen, it's quite likely some apps won't behave correctly when resized to an arbitrary size. Running in the preview *should* be sufficient to test for this, but there's no guarantee the preview be

The security programs manufacturers (AntiMalware/firewalls/etc)? You know, the ones most sensible to changes in kernels and drivers? Even more, for which a "false positive" against a system service/dll may cause the security suite to bomb the OS?

In the real world, developers must have access to the RTM bits before [general availability].

I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but is this really true?

Well I guess in the "real world" there's no open source software, since developers and users get access to the same code at the same time. Honestly, is there really going to be a day one rush to upgrade your OS? Maybe in the slashdot crowd but the "market" will take their sweet time.

Well I guess in the "real world" there's no open source software, since developers and users get access to the same code at the same time.

Sure, Firefox has the Beta, Aurora, and Nightly channels, Chrome has something analogous, and Ubuntu has the beta of the next semiannual Alliterative Animal version. But the vast majority of end users don't expect them to be supported in the same way that the release is supported. Beta users expect breakage. However, developers can rely on builds marked "release candidate" to be nearly identical in behavior to the RTM, especially once the final release candidate is declared RTM a short time in advance of pu

In the real world, developers must have access to the RTM bits before [general availability].

I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but is this really true? As long as Microsoft has tested and is certain of backwards compatibility, then it doesn't matter.

He said "real world". There's no such thing as 100% backwards compatibility in the real world -- every bug fix and api update introduces a potential incompatibility for a developer that inadvertently (or even intentionally) relied on the previous behavior.

In any case, who are these devs and why are they so irate? There's nothing at work worth getting emotional about. It's just work.

It's not just "work", it's lost revenue from customers that can't get your software to work, extra staffing costs to answer emails and phone calls from customers reporting problems, and hours of extra overtime work trying to fix a problem in a few days wh

It's not just "work", it's lost revenue from customers that can't get your software to work, extra staffing costs to answer emails and phone calls from customers reporting problems, and hours of extra overtime work trying to fix a problem in a few days when you normally would have had 2 weeks to fix it.

Expensive popular games will run or be patched very quickly. MS productivity products will be updated or just keep working.
DirectX 11.2 is on the way too and developers can enjoy thinking about that support.
If you bought into the MS way, 'write and test their apps against Windows 8.1 Preview" seems to be the method.

If a behavior difference between preview and release causes an application that worked under preview to fail under release, the owners have to deal with increased support issues resulting from this failure. Support costs money.

There are some exceptions: We poor IT people who see Windows Server 2012 R2 and its bump of Hyper-V heading right for our data centers, and want to be able to start testing on it as soon as possible.

A preview release won't do, as there almost definitely will be changes between it and RTM versions.

Yes, on Windows 8, it is a lot of cosmetic changes, but Windows Server 2012 R2 has a number of new features that need to be evaluated and scoped out, testbeds created, tickets to vendors made (so they can fix incompatibilities), build documents updated, AD policies checked, tests to see if the OS will work on existing hardware, and so on.

All this OS testing has to be done and well documented before anything hits the production floor. Yes, one can sit on Windows Server 2003 and not bother trying to throw anything newer, but things change, and even though ESXi might be the mainstay of virtualization now, the deduplication and VM handoff (similar to vMotion) capabilities of the 2012 R2 Hyper-V will make it extremely attractive as a competitor. This all has to be well tested and documented.

Not doing so will eventually result in a day when the auditors come by, find obsolete versions on products, demand they be upgraded... which forces the business to go head-long to the latest OS or else. Might as well ease the pain and take time to get things tested, bugs found, and workarounds documented as early as possible.

Of course, this varies from business to business. Some companies can remain on NT 4.0 and be well off. Others have lots of software and regulatory issues, which means that not keeping updated means failing security audits.